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Related Concept Videos

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The confirmation bias is the tendency to focus on information that confirms our existing beliefs and ignore information that is inconsistent with our expectations. For example, if you think that your professor is not very nice, you notice all of the instances of rude behavior exhibited by the professor while ignoring the countless pleasant interactions he is involved in on a daily basis. Have you ever fallen prey to the confirmation bias, either as the source or target of such bias?
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Genetic variations accumulating within populations over generations give rise to biological evolution. Evolutionary changes can result in the formation of novel varieties and entire new species. These changes are responsible for the diverse forms of life inhabiting the planet. The evidence for evolution suggests that all living organisms descended from common ancestors.
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While variables are sometimes correlated because one does cause the other, it could also be that some other factor, a confounding variable, is actually causing the systematic movement in our variables of interest. For instance, as sales in ice cream increase, so does the overall rate of crime. Is it possible that indulging in your favorite flavor of ice cream could send you on a crime spree? Or, after committing crime do you think you might decide to treat yourself to a cone?
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Evolutionary psychology explores the origins of human behavior and mental processes by framing them within the context of natural selection, a theory famously propounded by Charles Darwin. This field asserts that many behaviors common across human societies — ranging from instinctive fear reactions to complex social interactions — arose as evolutionary adaptations. These adaptations enhanced the survival and reproductive success of our ancestors, thereby becoming embedded in the...
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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Sep 27, 2025

Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6- to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization
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Humans actively sample evidence to support prior beliefs.

Paula Kaanders1,2, Pradyumna Sepulveda3, Tomas Folke4,5

  • 1Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom.

Elife
|April 11, 2022
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

People actively seek information confirming their choices, a bias that strengthens with confidence. This confirmation bias in information gathering leads to sticking with original decisions, even when wrong, highlighting the impact of active information seeking on beliefs.

Keywords:
confirmation biasdecision-makinghumaninformation samplingneuroscience

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Decision Science

Background:

  • Confirmation bias describes underweighting information contradicting prior choices.
  • This study explores if a similar bias influences active information seeking.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate how making a choice affects subsequent information gathering.
  • To determine if agency in information acquisition influences decision-making and belief persistence.

Main Methods:

  • A perceptual choice task was employed to observe information sampling behavior.
  • Participants' information sampling was compared between conditions with and without agency in evidence presentation.

Main Results:

  • Participants actively sampled more information supporting their initial choice.
  • Higher confidence in the initial choice amplified this information sampling bias.
  • The bias diminished when information presentation was experimenter-controlled (fixed sampling).

Conclusions:

  • Active information acquisition, driven by choice and confidence, reinforces initial decisions.
  • Agency in seeking confirmatory evidence is critical for belief propagation and resistance to revision.